


This Is No Honorable Fight

by seventhe



Series: Sev’s Gen Bingo Card 2019 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Angst and Feels, Celes/Leo implied, F/M, Gen, im amused thats a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 04:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17932523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/seventhe
Summary: General Leo confronts ex-General Celes the night before her execution.





	This Is No Honorable Fight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lassarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/gifts).



> For the gen_bingo square: _watching helplessly_

For gen_bingo square:  _ watching helplessly _

**This Is No Honorable Fight**

——

Leo has to go see her.

It isn’t even a question of loyalty or honor; he has to see her, his fellow General and co-worker and friend and protege. He has to look her in the eye and ask what in the world could have prompted her to take this path. Of all the things he had ever expected to see while serving the Empire, General Celes accused of treason was never even a possibility.

And yet. Here he is.

Her cell is no kinder than the rest of the cells they use for prisoners. Leo cannot decide whether this is better or worse: on one hand, a General of the Empire deserves respect; on the other hand, a traitor deserves the lowest of the low. His vision seems doubled, looking at her, chained to the wall; he sees the bright pride of the Empire and he sees a shadow, gathered in her eyes.

The basement here is chill. Leo can hear water dripping from somewhere, a long slow metronome.  For a moment they simply stare at each other, and it feels like a weight settling down on Leo’s shoulders, as heavy as his armor.

“Chere,” he says. Their titles are formal; last names are like nicknames, between them, and the raw first names are too real at the moment, until Leo discerns what’s going on.

She nods. “Cristophe. I expected you.”

“I had hoped the news was wrong,” he offers back. Neither of them tend to give any quarter anymore; they have been through too many battles and too much sparring to bother to be anything but flat and honest. They have at times been closer to each other than anyone else in Leo’s life. He hopes this is a thing she might come around on, given time and diatribe.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Chere looks anything  _ but _ sorry; there’s a tilt to her head that he recognizes, her tell when going on the defensive.  

“Tell me.”  Leo glances around, finds a rickety old stool; drags it in front of the cell. He wonders if she still has her magic, then assumes she would have freed herself if she could. “Tell me the story from your eyes.”

Her chin tilts up; this is Chere on the  _ offensive _ now, and she’s choosing her words with care.  “Kefka has crossed a line. He has lost his honor.”

Leo breathes in slowly. Palazzo is problematic, this is true, but he also has the Emperor’s right hand in all things. To denounce him is betrayal, indeed. And Chere uses his first name without title, as if she would specifically target him personally as well as professionally. “How so?”

Chere stares him down. “Kefka plans to poison the whole of Doma Castle. He will foul their water source, killing all within.” The stare becomes steely, and this is  _ Celes, _ now, the woman he’s loved, her pale eyes lit with a determined spark. “That includes Imperial soldiers held captive, as well as innocents within the castle not part of any army.”

“He would not,” Leo says immediately. “It is a horrible joke of his, but it is a joke.”

Celes tips her head like a bird, watching him. “I have seen the poison, Cristophe. It may sound a joke, but it is rooted in truth.”

Leo shakes his head, but he’s thinking now. He is assigned to Doma as well, and he outranks Palazzo.  “I will order him to stay his hand,” he says to her slowly. “Do you not trust my judgment?”

“It isn’t yours I don’t trust,” Celes says, and she’s spitting it at him as if  _ he _ is the traitor. “It’s his - Kefka’s. It’s the Empire’s. This is no honorable fight. Since when do we slaughter innocents and our own in the name of victory?”

“We have long been at war with Doma,” Leo says, his voice heating despite his efforts to keep his calm. “And you yourself have done the same. Or am I not speaking to the General Celes who burnt down Maranda?”

Celes  _ hisses _ at him, an animal noise gone feral. “That is the  _ point, _ Leo. Do you know what it was like, seeing the villagers watching helplessly as their homes were destroyed? As their kin died?”

“It is treason to raise arms against the Empire,” Leo retorts. “We take over these towns to  _ help them _ , to let them become part of our Empire, to place them under our protection and bring them our technologies.  Those who fought signed their own death sentence.”

“Our  _ protection, _ ” Celes sneers. “Where was that protection for the villagers in Maranda?”

“From the one who lit the flame.”  Leo is growing angry, waves of it emanating out to his fingertips. The betrayal of the Empire is a grand enough thing to try to understand. This more personal betrayal, though, Celes herself rejecting their very cause: Leo is finding that it hurts. The problem is that they both know how each other’s weak spots: in verbal battle as well as physical.

“And then I stood and watched them burn.” Her face is stone, now, but her voice sounds raw, as if she wants to be screaming it. “Do you think I found joy in that?”

“A General’s job is not to create joy. It is to follow  _ orders.  _ It is about honor, and loyalty.” He pauses. “There will always be casualties, Celes.”

“Loyalty.” Celes’ voice goes light, as if this is some philosophical concept they’re toying with, rather than her own condemnation.  “Honor. What do these things mean to you, Cristophe?”

“I find honor in fealty,” he says immediately. “I find glory in serving the Empire and bringing its foes in under our wings, that the community may be more enriched together than separately.”  He stops, and adds slowly, “Once you felt that way as well.”

Celes looks at him a long time, and her shoulders sag slightly. “Is it not about doing what is right?” Her voice is low, and injured-sounding, as if he has wounded her.

Leo presses his hands together, touches his fingers to his mouth. “You do not believe the Empire to be right,” he says softly. And here they are, to the bottom of it: they play with words as they spar with swords, but this is a different kind of truth.

Celes sighs, and her form crumples in on itself, as much as it can.  “I am tired of death, Leo,” she says finally. “I am tired of killing.”

Leo replies, “I thought you were a General. The White Sword of the Empire. Glory and victory. You cannot be tired of what you are, of what you were made to be. Of what  _ we _ were.” He cannot keep the judgment from his tone, no matter how hard he tries, and from the expression on Celes’ face, it stings as it should.

Her eyes slash back at him, and she gathers herself. “I am tired of seeing brutality where I should see a stern but fair arm. I am tired of thinking the deaths of innocents are an acceptable cost. I watched our men sack South Figaro, and they spared little.”  She pauses and tilts her head again, now reminding Leo of a falcon, a hawk, something watching and hunting. “Kefka dances on arson and sings encouragement to cruelty, the Emperor does nothing to stop him, and Leo, I will  _ no longer _ deal death without my honor.”

“Only a fool finds honor in betrayal.” Leo flings it at her, trying to make her understand, to make her  _ see. _  She can’t be talking about  _ him: _ Leo considers himself an honorable man, and while he has razed his own cities, he also tells his men to avoid battle when possible, to attempt negotiation before drawing swords. He is  _ not _ Kefka. That is  _ not _ what he stands for.

“I refuse to stand, watching helplessly, as atrocities are done in my name.” Celes shakes her hair from his face and meets his gaze head-on, holding back nothing in her face. “What you call honor, Leo, is no more than  _ obedience. _ ”

It hits Leo in the chest, that she thinks him so low.  “Duty is a Knight’s responsibility,” he says, and it sounds wounded.

“Do you obey every order without thinking?” Her voice is a rasp, eating away at his certainty. “Would you poison Doma, if the Emperor willed it? He might, after all; he now listens to Kefka more than both of us combined.”

His lack of response seems to be answer enough, for she closes her eyes and bows her head. Eventually he says, “No. I would not.”

“I know,” Celes says, and it’s small and pained. “I am sorry. You would not.” She sighs. “I simply cannot, Leo.”

“And you would follow this even into death?” Leo asks gently. “For that is to be your fate.”

Celes keeps her gaze hard on the floor when she says, softly, “Better a death with honor than a dog on a leash.”

Leo breathes out, in a rush, feeling punched by her words. Silence sits between them, marking time in water drops, thick and heavy.

“I am sorry it has come to this,” he murmurs eventually, “that you think so low of me to leave me, and in this fashion.”

“We could leave,” Celes breathes. “Take me away. I would go with you, away from this disaster, somewhere we could find peace.”

And it breaks Leo’s heart, because he cannot: his own honor as a Knight and General is tied up with the Empire. “To betray the Emperor now would break me,” he tells her.

“To stay would break me,” Celes says, and it’s sad and final and all things Leo never thought he would feel. He is used to keeping his heart as armored as his chest. Of course he only realizes she snuck in the day before her execution.

“Consider the good you could do, here.” His tone is more urgent than he intended. “You and I can stand against Kefka’s problematic ways. It is not too late.”

“It is too late,” Celes says. “Stay if you must. For me, the poison is already here.”

The silence lands again, a tingling on Leo’s skin, a sense of finality.

“I will speak to the Emperor,” Leo says, standing slowly. “I do not like the haste of this, nor the sentence, for one we have so heavily invested in.”

“And if he says no?” Celes’ eyes are a challenge, the spark he loves to see, except for now when it seems to have doomed her.

All Leo can offer is this: “I will consider your words.”

She tosses her hair again and scoffs. “And you will stand tomorrow, watching helplessly, as they execute my sentence.”

“I will not,” he says softly, because he cannot.

Celes exhales, long and slow. “Then I am right,” she says, her voice taut and sad. “There is no honor left in you. Merely service.”  He knows she is taunting him, trying to get him to see her side.

Leo cannot answer that - will not answer that - so he simply nods at her, and turns to leave.

“Goodbye, Leo.” It’s soft, almost a whisper, and it feels absolute.

——

(Leo does not watch her execution. It does not happen. General Celes has fled in the night. The Emperor calls her a coward for fleeing her final fate, rather than facing it with honor.)

(Leo tells his troops to minimize casualties at Doma. He tells himself it is for her.)

(Despite Leo’s orders, Kefka poisons the waters of Doma. The casualties are staggering. The Empire has won and Doma is no more.)

(Leo is not pleased with the victory. Her words hang in his ears. Kefka laughs.)

(Leo sees her at the Emperor’s banquet, sitting at the table she once stood guard at, and her eyes are free, her face alight. The Emperor laughs.)

(Leo heads to Thamasa, thinking of her, and his honor. He does not laugh.)

(He will not watch helplessly as this falls apart.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I’m still accepting commissions to help me through until April~! Check the details out here: https://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/422906.html


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